Experts predict Lee Myung Bak’s behavior; Still no comment from Miss Cleo, Nostradamus, or KCNA
My “what to expect from Lee MB” updates have outgrown and seceded from this post. As for what we should expect from a Lee presidency, any prediction rows into some pretty treacherous water. Lee strikes me as a guy who begins with dry cost-benefit analysis, but one with an autocratic streak as wide as that asinine canal he’s proposing to build. Lee’s history and my gut suggest a term punctuated by emotional, stubborn, and vindictive behavior, which means that national policy may well come down to who pisses him off.
Bad news for North Korea, that. And very possibly bad news for the guy in the orange jacket, whoever he is:
You can really feel the love there, can’t you? Comrade Chung might want to just ask Kim Jong Il for political asylum now. Maybe he can get an anchorman job up there on “Voice of Peoples Korea” or somesuch.
Bruce Klingner of the Heritage Foundation, who probably has had enough contact with Lee’s people to know what he’s talking about, discusses how Lee’s election will affect U.S.-ROK relations.
Lee Myung-bak will improve bilateral coordination between the U.S. and South Korea in the Six-Party Talks, reducing Pyongyang’s ability to play the two allies against each other. A realistic policy that requires reciprocity and transparency from North Korea will also be more consistent with Six-Party Talks objectives of using coordinated multi-lateral diplomatic efforts to leverage Pyongyang’s implementation of its nuclear commitments.
Inter-Korean relations could be delayed in the short-term since North Korea may respond angrily to Lee Myung-bak’s imposition of conditionality in Seoul’s engagement policy. In seeking to influence South Korean policy, Pyongyang could also hinder progress in the Six-Party Talks and threaten a return to brinksmanship, blaming Lee’s espousal of outdated Cold War thinking. Lee should maintain resolve, however, in order for South Korea to gain more leverage in moderating North Korean behavior, inducing economic and political reform, and ensuring Pyongyang fulfills its denuclearization pledges. [Heritage Foundation, Bruce Klingner]
Needless to say, there will be other problems to overcome. Predictably, Lee is already asking the United States to slow down the handover of wartime military operational control to the South Koreans. At his confirmation hearing, the nominee* for Undersecretary of Defense for East Asian Affairs, John Shinn, sounded as though that was off the table, but the desire for the Bush Administration to ingratiate itself with the new Korean administration will be hard to resist after so many years of bleak relations. (* Shinn may actually be one of many nominees whose confirmations squeaked through before Congress went into recess. I haven’t had time to check this.)
“I voted for Lee Myung-bak even though I think he’s a little corrupt,” said Kim Cho-rong, 21, a college student studying interior design. “I figured someone who is a little guilty but competent was better for our society than someone who is innocent but incompetent. [N.Y. Times]
“No one is absolutely clean when you strip-search successful and wealthy businessmen in Korea,” said Ahn Jae-woo, 54, an insurance executive who voted for Lee early today before going Christmas shopping with his family in a Seoul mall. “This election is not about ethical issues, it’s about who is really capable of making Korea prosperous.” [WaPo]
Klingner is right when he says that the left will continue to attack Lee’s ethics. If I were Lee, I’d be hauling away and sealing every government record and hard drive I could lay my hands on at the moment, because the obvious antidote to scandal is scandal, and personally, I’m hoping for a nice, juicy North Korean influence scandal. One of my greatest interests in the post-election phase has always been what we’d learn about the rest of the Il Shim Hue spy ring story. There were published reports that North Korea’s agents included one of Roh Moo Hyun’s close advisors, and/or a Blue House Secretary. I’d like to know just what the former head of South Korea’s National Intelligence Service had found when he was suddenly replaced. I also have an intense interest in whether the full exposure of this story will touch Im Jong In, a lawmaker of the now-defunct but formerly ruling Uri Party.
The Marmot’s view, though colored by an understandable desire to give Lee a chance to be a statesman, also seems realistic. If you’re interested, here’s the International Crisis Group’s take on what a Lee presidency will bring. [U/D: We should forgot to mention Prof. Andrei Lankov’s comment here, and if you haven’t read Lankov’s book yet, then you absolutely should.]
Personally, however, I’m most interested in what KCNA thinks about Lee and his latest statements promising more scrutiny of North Korea on human rights. Unfortunately, KCNA is now on its fifth day of official silence. Odd. [U/D: As I’d noted previously, KCNA found time to congratulate the President-Elect of Switzerland and to get in one last dig against Lee Hoi Chang, but not a word on Lee Myung Bak’s victory yet. I am no longer the only one to have noticed this. Yet we know that the North Korean press has been full of anti-Lee Hoi Chang fulminations, and an OFK reader and recent visitor to Pyongyang tells us that North Koreans were keenly curious about the election. So either North Koreans have wisely suspended their curiosity or the gossip is spreading like projectile chlamydia aboard the Charles De Gaulle. That, or the regime is broadcasting the news over the cable radio.]
By the way, if you’re a truly obsessed North Korea watcher, KCNA’s latest probably has your nipples all a-tingle; they’re doing non-stop adulation of Kim Jong Suk, Kim Jong Il’s dysfunctional mother, pausing only to to talk about the visit of the Dear Leader’s sister to the remote and desolate crap-heap known as Hoeryong, where the main industries are coal mining, concentration camps, coal mined in concentration camps, and fleeing the country. All of this probably has some subtle significance for the succession question, but trying to understand Kim Jong Il’s tangled web of paternity is like compiling a comprehensive geneology of West Virginia. If you happen to be unlucky enough to actually live in Hoeryong, the main significance is that you might just have found yourself out on your ass in late December. Also, there’s a “visa-free” agreement between North Korea and Belarus, which promises a trade boom in gray vinalon, olive green polyester, and assorted unmarked crates buried under sacks of cement.